No Mercy for the Restless
by Silvia Kundera
Summary: Mood piece. A slice of adventure, planet-of-the-week. Kirk/Spock


Title: No Mercy for the Restless  
Fandom: Star Trek XI/AOS/Reboot  
Pairing: Kirk/Spock Rating: Teen  
Words: 1,529  
Disclaimer: I do not own anything about Star Trek. No copyright infringement intended. Not created or shared for profit.  
Notes: Written for rhaegal. Mood piece. A bit of adventure, planet-of-the-week.

~8~

It's not just the warped, golden hue of the air, dropping down in sheets from the sky and creating undulating blurs, twisting and squirming over and through his vision. It's the _revolutions_, the sudden plummeting in and out of absolute, breath swallowing darkness. The planet's suns are shifting at an unpredictable pace. And, right, the unsettlingly blank, long or short (because, well, unconscious so _unquantifiable_) memory gaps couldn't, wouldn't have helped in this -- the utter, incontrovertible conspiracy to rob Jim Kirk of any conception of time and space.

They have come some length, in some time, and this is the knowledge Jim has. It's a thought he doesn't chase, can't rest on. He breathes around it and moves without destination -- because above all, beyond anything that Jim Kirk will ever be, has been, he is good at picking a direction to run to and following it to the end.

Chunky, crumbling pebbles unsettle his steps, splitting under his boots, and Spock's arm is a hot brand under his palm as he grabs for it. The cloth has been baking, like anything, everything, like his _lungs_, but the arm is steady, of course, and Kirk would give him hell for it, somehow, because that's sort of completely, inexplicably _infuriating_, but no, the universe hates him. Because it's a Wednesday (or a Tuesday, or Thursday). Because it _can_.

_Because it wasn't charted and yet the planet was there (a speckled yellow oddity that just **felt** wrong, in a stupid tense weight seeping into his shoulders) and the Admiral said to make it quick, just a glance and some samples, and Jim hasn't been a Captain long enough to try to fight every battle he might not need to win._

_It took two hours to plan, leaning over Spock's shoulder to stab at the screen with breakfast glazed finger pads and watch his eyes narrow. Ten minutes to assemble under McCoy's cheerful glower. They took Boutin and Konoe, the tricorder, and a few fervent requests from the botanists._

_They were mostly all materialized when the world dropped out from under them._

_The silence was, is, indescribable. It evaporated sound and movement like no silence he'd known, and his hand on the communicator felt slow and clumsy (though it had still jerked up instinctually, as if his arm sensed something before his brain could panic properly). Wince-bright, sunlit sky and a claustrophobic quiet that seemed to compress inward as his mouth opened and closed. He was aware of his tongue and his throat, the movement inside it, muscles slotting together, in an unnatural, self-conscious way that made him clap his other palm over it, both arms crossed over his chest in a dead man's parody._

_The wind and the heat were drying his eyes, forcing slow unnerving blinks that blotted out every sense but touch, that made his stomach twist at cooler fingers roughly sliding between his to share the cooking tricorder. It read: nothing. And he laughed (heaving soundlessly with it), because, of course, of course, of course. It was too fucking perfect, and he shook it a little, like a rattle, a desert-snake warning, and bared his teeth. It might have been whirring, deep inside, but it wouldn't give a readout and it was searing his fucking palm, and his eyes were wider than Spock's, sure, but Spock was clenching his left hand, maybe, to hide the fingers' trembling. And that--it was somehow the most horrible thing._

_Konoe was smacking his chest panic-hard (Jim could tell from the wide arc of his arm, the tense strength in his shoulder as he rammed at the communicator) and Boutin was cupping his ears (which, actually, appealed-- looked comforting in an inexplicable way) when the quiet split._

_It rose up suddenly with rapid, dust laced movement that his eyes couldn't begin to track. He was hurtling forward, face first into a thick slap of shattering rock and hard sand that opened his cheek, Spock rolling them once, twice, and he stopped counting at the curl of something **reptilian** encircling his ankle, a tug that near-wrenched something in his knee, a shock of fire where bones meet. It released (an alarming snap-back of calf to thigh) and went--elsewhere (he didn't think of them, Konoe and Boutin, until later, shame like ice ripping up his spine)._

_He just-- they turned and turned, his face tucked tight into Spock's neck, pressing into the bite of Spock's slight stubby nails against his ribs and waist. When they stopped, tumbled over the edge of a dune and onto untrembling gravel, he had to strain to flex his fingers (clutched near-arthritic stiff around handfuls of Spock's uniform). The dip of Spock's throat was painted glossy red, caked with a thick mud of dirt and Jim's blood, and Jim rubbed the worst of it off-- something to do, something to fix as they panted and sucked in scalding thick air. Except for the rise and fall of his lungs, Spock sat motionless, tilted up on his elbows, watching Jim watch him and tap the curve of his chin, guiding it sideways for a better angle._

_Each breath seemed to fill his head fuller, pile on to make it pound **harder**, and when he felt his forehead dip, felt the black spread out during a molasses slow blink, he was jerked straight to his feet (maybe time had passed, maybe, maybe) (maybe there had been the brush of an opening mouth, forming of words against his temple, maybe a request, a reprimand, possibly). And then they were walking, because--because sitting wasn't working, and there was something glorious in the crisp concept of **shade**._

They are nowhere, no-when, and the dark, soft contours of Spock's face are wildly alien in this world like they've never been to Jim before. It stills something in his chest, the dry curve of Spock's neck, and he wants to rub his exhausted human mess across the proud stretch of Spock's back and make up words to explain it.

He walks instead, and doesn't think about water or talking -- empties his mind into equations for the travel of light and mass, the galactic mathematics of minutes. It's calculation for the sake of calculation, for the focus of it, for the stubborn pleasure in plodding forward despite futility, ignoring the mass of guesstimates underpinning each hard-won number. Mind following body.

They may have passed the spot a dozen times where they all beamed in, they may be going in circles. He doesn't know where Spock has been, if Spock's left him while he _(fainted)_ sleeps. It's another thought he doesn't think.

There are so many that he can't know which Spock captures first, hands creeping up to cradle his face in one of those sudden, dark moments when the three suns seem to wink out of existence. He sees: his face, first, (drawn and impossibly tired) and the expanse of sand as Spock perceives it (sharper and bleakly endless). And then, Spock's _voice_, not something heard, not exactly, but stamped across his mind with vicious gentleness. And that's where Jim stops, throws himself backwards--head snapping out of Spock's grip and the meld with his full weight behind it, and it stabs bright specks into the black behind and in front of his eyelids, head thudding against the ground, jarring his spine, rekindling that all-body ache, and he really does not give a shit.

Jim stops because it's "_Captain_" and it sounds more like his name than his _name_ ever did, and he knows (he knows protocol is to abandon mission and retreat if two teams have been 24 hours planetside without communication; he knows the rescue team would have found them by now if they were going to; he knows what he's always known, how he feels, what he's kept so poorly hidden). But he's not saying goodbye, he _isn't_.

And yet, he knows, and so he braces his hands against Spock's legs, fumbling upward, returning to kiss him instead. He thinks: I'm not ready. I may never be ready for this. But he cups the back of Spock's head with one hand (the thing is, he's never learned to stop himself, so he does it anyway), and Spock's mouth answers him, wet against his, and then moves up to skim over his forehead, lips brushing the line of his hair, pausing to press firmly against his right eyebrow, then his left, to hum against his cheekbone, to feather over his eyelids. He thinks: it's not okay, nothing could make it okay that this is too soon, that this was not how he thought it would end. But it's not nothing, Spock's hand at the small of his back, Spock's leg shifted between Jim's, and he's shaking as they kiss again, as he bites at the smooth glide of skin he'd wiped clean hours or days ago.

He's still shaking when he feels the breeze cease, the temperature flux and abrupt grip of the transporter into every cell, skipping his heartbeat, and thinks every single thought he told himself he couldn't have. And opens his mouth. And waits for it--


End file.
